Mooring or docking a boat conventionally involves tying at least one mooring line between a cleat secured to the boat and a dock, pier, slip or other stationary mooring structure. This can be a difficult and trying task, particularly in rough water where the motion of the boat and slippery wet surfaces can render it difficult to properly secure the mooring line to the boat.
Moreover, the boat must be equipped with a mooring line of sufficient length to accommodate various mooring environments, although in many cases only a portion of the mooring line will be required to secure the boat. The excess mooring line can be difficult to stow neatly, and is thus subject to becoming knotted or tangled, or entangled with persons, cargo or equipment on the boat, which can pose both an inconvenience and a hazard.
Retractable mooring lines have been proposed, in which a line is wound about a payoff reel and dispensed as needed to moor the boat under the particular mooring conditions encountered at the time. An example of such a device is described and illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 4,846,090 issued Jul. 11, 1989 to Palmquist, which is incorporated herein by reference, which teaches a spring-loaded reel biased in the take-up direction and provided with a ratchet-type lock that is selectively engaged to ratchet teeth provided along the edges of the reel guide walls, to prevent rotation in the payoff direction when the boat is moored.
However, the use of a ratchet-type lock with a spring-loaded payoff reel can cause problems due to the oscillating motion experienced by a moored boat in wavy conditions. Where the mooring structure is above the level of the securing point on the boat, as the boat is lifted upwardly by a wave the tension on the mooring line is temporarily released, which allows the reel to rotate in the take-up direction. As the crest of the wave passes, the boat begins to fall, but in the newly locked position of the reel the mooring line is too short to allow the boat to freely roll off of the wave, causing the boat to list away from the mooring structure. Similarly, where the mooring structure is below the level of the securing point on the boat, when the boat falls into a trough the tension on the mooring line is temporarily released, which allows the reel to turn in the take-up direction and locks the mooring line so that as the crest of the next wave arrives and lifts the boat the mooring line is too short to allow the boat to rise to the crest of the wave, causing the boat to list toward the mooring structure.
A retractable mooring line device which provides a positive lock against rotation of the payoff reel in both directions is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,095,075 issued Aug. 1, 2000 to Gordon et al., which is incorporated herein by reference. This device is particularly suitable for light- and medium-duty applications. However, the latch engages only one wall of the payoff reel. A moored boat can be subjected to very high peak forces due to wave action and currents, and repetitive momentary tension on the mooring line is transferred to the payoff reel, which in turn subjects the locking mechanism to high momentary stresses. The payoff reel guide wall becomes subject to shearing or deformation and thus must be formed to a gauge sufficient to resist deformation under ordinary conditions.
It would accordingly be advantageous to provide a retractable mooring device with a payoff reel that can be locked in both the payoff and take-up directions and which provides a secure and stable lock simultaneously against both walls of the payoff reel, to effectively double the resistance to deformation of the reel under the stresses normally encountered by a mooring line, but in which the lock can be released with minimal effort.